Iran Attacked Israel Only After U.S. Rejected Its Moderate Stance
Yesterday a massive barrage of Iranian ballistic missiles hit Israel. It came after months of serious Iranian efforts (vid) to achieve better relations with the U.S. had failed. Israel had managed to sabotage those efforts to the detriment of its U.S. ally.
To understand what has happened – and, more importantly, why this attack was launched today – we need to look back.
On May 20 2024 then President of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, died in a helicopter accident.
New elections were held in Iran and, to the astonishment of many, Masoud Pezeshkian, a moderate, won with a decent majority. Pezeshkian is a specialist in cardiac surgery with no experience in foreign policy. He had campaigned on reconnecting with the ‘West’, the lifting of sanctions on Iran and a generally more liberal policy.
On July 30:
Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, was assassinated along with his personal bodyguard in the Iranian capital Tehran by an apparent Israeli attack. Haniyeh was killed in his accommodation in a military-run guesthouse after attending the inauguration ceremony for Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian.
The assassination of Haniyeh was a major offense against the sovereignty of the the Islamic Republic of Iran. It also was a personal offense against Masoud Pezeshkian’s presidency.
The Supreme Leader of Iran Ayatollah Khomeini and the leadership of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) wooed to retaliate for the strike. But the new president still argued to not retaliate but to seek accommodation through negotiations. He, at that time, still hoped that the U.S. would arrange for a ceasefire in Gaza and wanted to avoid that Iran would be blamed for a failure of those negotiations.
President Pezeshkian continued his moderate course. On September 23, during a his participation in the UN General Assembly in New York, he again put out feelers towards a new accommodation with the U.S. over Iran’s nuclear program:
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Monday emphasized his openness to a new international agreement over his country’s nuclear program — a subject that has fueled global tensions for years, risking potentially catastrophic warfare between Iran and the U.S.
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Asked about restoring nuclear negotiations, Pezeshkian said through a translator: “I do hope we can … reach an agreement.”
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He said Iran upheld its end of the nuclear deal unlike the U.S. — an assessment most outside experts share, though there are some long-standing concerns about Iranian compliance — and pointed to American diplomats saying time and again that a cease-fire deal in Gaza that can boost stability across the Middle East is just a week away.
Within Iran the moderated course was seen with suspicion:
The lack of trust specifically affects the calculus of Iran’s supreme leade
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